The Changing Face of Horror

Few movie genres are as cyclical as the horror genre. Maybe it's because fright fans are always craving something new, or perhaps it somehow reflects the cultural climate of any given era. Whatever the reason, horror movies always seemed to be lumped into groups, with a particular style wildly in vogue for a short time before something "newer" took its place.

In the 1950's, many horror pictures were filled with either atomic paranoia or the nervous fear of the "Red Menace." Oh, sure, they often pretended to be about alien invaders or bug-eyed monsters, but one look below the surface showed hidden meanings. It's no coincidence that so many films of the decade - from The Fly to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - dealt with transformations. The U.S. was living in fear of the A-bomb, as well as spread of Communism. Filmmakers used the subtle influence of those issues to fuel their stories.

Also consider the 1970's, when the Nixon administration created a mistrust of government, and the Vietnam War created feelings of rage among those who felt we were stuck in an unwinnable conflict. That animosity was channeled by directors into their horror films. Wes Craven has openly stated that his nihilistic Last House on the Left was a direct response to the anger he felt about the war. Since the 70's were a time when idealism morphed into activism, it made sense that filmmakers would use their works to explore topical issues.

It wasn't always hot-button issues being used as fodder either; George A. Romero ruthlessly satirized rampant consumerism in his zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, in which the undead ran amok in a Pennsylvania shopping mall. (Imagine what Romero could have done with that premise today, in a mall full of tweens buying camera phones and iPods and those sneakers with little wheels inside.) In many senses, the 70's were a really interesting time for horror pictures, as many of them satisfied viewers longing to see gruesome blood and gore while still appealing to those in the audience who wanted stinging social satire and/or political commentary.

The 1980's (which encompassed my teenage years) brought the rise of the "slasher movie." Following the success of John Carpenter's classic Halloween in 1978, the next decade seemed to bring us one movie about a masked lunatic with a knife after another. Most notably, there were the exploits of Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th and its many, many, many, (too) many sequels. We were also introduced to Chucky the doll in Child's Play. More than a few of the slasher movies revolved around holidays. There was the yuletide-themed Silent Night, Deadly Night, as well as Mother's Day, April Fool's Day and My Bloody Valentine. It's not technically a holiday, but Prom Night was covered as well. Astonishingly, no horror filmmaker ever bothered to capitalize on Arbor Day.

Freddy Kruger in the Nightmare on Elm Street pictures resided alongside the more traditional slasher pics, but was distinguished by having something of a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that the mirthless Jason Voorhees could only dream of. Then again, who's to say he wasn't grinning like the Cheshire Cat under that ratty old hockey mask?

Anyone who attended movies throughout the 80's doubtlessly became overwhelmed by the sheer number of slasher flicks. There were so many of them that it often seemed as though a new one opened each weekend. Worse, they were all generally the same, the only difference being the mask worn by the killer and/or the holiday when all the murders took place. Oddly, a few films in this genre are considered classics. I'm still baffled by how much some people revere Friday the 13th. Cheap-o to the extreme, it offers none of the terror of Halloween, the much smarter movie it so desperately mimicked. But hey - to each his own, I guess. I can still remember being in middle school and hearing a classmate talk about how messed up it was. One person's garbage is another person's treasure.

People eventually stopped being scared by masked slashers, and the style died a slow, painful death that was ironic considering that the killers themselves usually dispatched their victims swiftly. Nevertheless, the slasher genre made its mark on the cinema, so the only logical way for horror to go was to reflect back on it satirically. When Scream was released in 1996, it had a pitiful opening weekend. However, word of mouth was so good that business actually improved the second weekend, and eventually the movie became a $100 million smash. Filled with a cast of young, attractive, up-and-coming actors, Scream poked fun at the now-exhausted conventions of the slasher flick. One of the characters even went so far as to point out the "rules" of such films, which all the other characters proceeded to break, much to their own regret.

It was a bombshell moment in the horror genre. Before you could say "hockey mask," every studio in town was scrambling to produce its own self-aware post-modern slasher movie. This interest just happened to coincide with the rise of the WB, a network whose programming was aimed at teenagers and young adults. Cheap to hire and eager for big screen work, many of the actors from the network - as well as other rising teen idols - were cast in these pictures. In addition to two Scream sequels, I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, Teaching Mrs. Tingle and Urban Legend made stars of folks like Katie Holmes, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Neve Campbell, and Joshua Jackson. For a while there, all these "meta" slasher movies were hits. Even more amazingly, Kevin Williamson - who penned several of them - became one of the first rock star screenwriters. In a business where the writer is often the least-known of any movie's key players, it was nothing short of remarkable that one would ascend to the ranks of MVP.

The joke was funny for a while but quickly became old. There were only so many times viewers could see Neve Campbell being chased by a knife-wielding psychopath and then cracking wise about it. Horror floundered for a few years, with no new style really emerging as popular. The Blair Witch Project in 1999 briefly suggested that ultra low-fi "homemade" chillers could be the new wave, but nobody else was ever able to match the sheer ingenuity of its concept and execution.

For inspiration, Hollywood looked to Asia, where super-freaky visuals and creepy atmospherics were the signifiers of fright films. When DreamWorks released The Ring - a remake of a popular Japanese horror movie called Ringu - in 2002, the studio had no expectations of having a hit. Like Scream, though, The Ring saw its business improve once word got out that it was one of the most genuinely unsettling stories to hit the big screen in a long time. American audiences had never seen this kind of trippy imagery. It was, literally, mind-blowing for a lot of people. I still remember dragging my girlfriend to an advance screening, unaware that she had a low tolerance for horror. We were both freaked out by the movie, although I enjoyed the experience while she deemed it torture. That woman forgave me enough to marry me, but I don't think she's ever forgiven me for subjecting her to it.

The Ring set of bells all over Tinseltown. Studios scrambled to snatch up the remake rights to every Asian horror film that was even marginally popular. We got two installments of The Grudge, as well as The Messengers and The Eye.

There was something funny about these Asian horror remakes, and it didn't take long for the crowds to figure it out. They all had generally the same images: creepy dead-eyed children, goth girls with faces hidden behind stringy black hair, ghostly figures who moved like contortionists, etc. The novelty wore off fast when every new picture felt exactly like the one before it. Occasionally, Hollywood still tries to squeeze an ounce of juice out of the subgenre - like the recent The Uninvited - but the masses have rejected recent efforts outright. Just like no one wants to drink milk that's a month beyond its expiration date, no one wants to sit through the umpteenth look-alike remake of a foreign horror movie.

As if in rebellion, horror pictures stopped trying to be moody and atmospheric and instead went for the jugular. A little movie called Saw started the trend that came to be known as "torture porn." Despite having a howler of an ending in addition to its subpar writing, direction, and acting, Saw became a massive hit simply because some people get off on watching characters get tortured on screen in excruciating detail. (Some still try to deny this little fact, but how popular do you think Saw and its progeny would have been had they radically toned down the blood and gore?) As soon as that made Dollar One, studios began cranking out one low-budget torture-fest after another, from the relentlessly grisly Hostel and its sequel, to See No Evil, I Know Who Killed Me, Captivity and, of course, Saw II, III, IV and V. These were movies that you'd reasonably think would only appeal to, say, the guy Malcolm McDowell played in A Clockwork Orange. What it says about our society that so many seemingly "normal" folks get a rush out of viewing the most gruesome murders possible is something I don't want to think about.

To some minds, including my own, torture porn represented the low point in horror cinema. It suddenly wasn't about story, or tone, or atmosphere anymore; it was about reveling in images of pointless depravity. Like actual pornography, these movies existed solely to let audience members "get off" on their "money shots."

Thank goodness people got sick of torture porn, just as they've gotten sick of most of the subgenres. (Okay, the Saw franchise continues to eke out a few bucks every Halloween, but the series' grosses go down every year.) For the first time in a long time, it seemed like there might not be anywhere for horror to go. A few arty fright flicks came and went, including The Mist, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Orphanage. Despite being of high quality, none really caught on, at least theatrically.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that horror rebooted itself by inventing...the reboot. Call 'em what you want: reboots, remakes, re-imaginings. Whatever you call 'em, the current big trend is taking classic horror movies and doing new versions of them. Sometimes taking inspiration from the past is a good idea. It can also go overboard. We've already had remakes of The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Friday the 13th, Last House on the Left, Black Christmas, Halloween, Prom Night, Dawn of the Dead, and My Bloody Valentine. Still to come are reboots of A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Birds and probably a few others we haven't heard about yet.

This trend, too, will pass. Where will horror go next? Hard to say, but I think the current phenomenon toward re-visiting classics will most likely produce a desire for something new. The next wave of horror movies will need to give audiences things we've never seen before; they will have to freak us out in new ways. For fans of the genre, this could be good news. With any luck, the next few years will be fertile for horror, and perhaps even groundbreaking. If the crowds respond at the box office - and it's probable that they will - it'll be a win-win situation for everyone involved.

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